In the early days of retailing, a retailer would receive a large box of goods from a manufacturer. Inside the box were retail units of some product. The retailer would then perform an operation called “restocking the shelves.” This would involve taking the individual retail units from the box and placing them neatly on the shelves to create an attractive display. The box, however, would remain in a back room, invisible to retail customers.
One difficulty with this system is an obvious one. It is tedious to restock the shelves one retail unit at a time.
Another, more pernicious, difficulty arises from the fact that the mere presence of a retail unit on the shelf, particularly one with an eye-catching design, calls attention to itself and stimulates sales. As more people buy, the number of units decreases, and hence the commercial impression of the retail units decreases. This creates a negative feedback loop in which as the rate of sales of retail units increases, the commercial impression created by the aggregate of retail units decreases.
In modern retailing, a retailer again receives a large box of goods from a manufacturer. However, inside the box are several smaller cartons, often called “retail-ready packages.” These cartons typically have an attractive design printed on them, and a perforation that can be torn away to reveal the individual retail units available for purchase. To re-stock shelves, the retailer simply tears the carton carefully at the perforation and places the entire carton on the shelf. This simplifies re-stocking considerably, since it is no longer necessary to carefully arrange the retail units on a shelf. In addition, even if all retail units have been sold, the carton remains and continues to create a commercial impression.
A difficulty in retail-ready packaging is that the retail units must be placed in the carton in a neat and attractive way.
Certain kinds of retail units are rigid and have a well-defined size and shape. Examples are boxes, cans, bottles, shrink-wrapped items, such as diapers or paper towels, cartons, such as milk cartons, and plastic containers, such as those used for yogurt. For these retail units, it is known to use a robot to pick individual retail units off a conveyor and place them in a retail-ready carton.
However, there is one common type of retail unit that lacks these properties: the pouch. Pouches, such as those used to package chips and nuts, are deformable, and tend not to have a uniform shape. This causes great difficulty for robots. As a result, it is not uncommon to fill retail-ready cartons by hand.